Solving Incoming Email Problems after Migrating to Sharepoint 2010

It's been a week of frustration and revelation this week after spending last weekend migrating our Sharepoint 2007 server to Sharepoint 2010.

I opted for the database attach method of upgrading as I had already setup 2 new virtual machines with Sharepoint 2010 and SQL Server 2008 respectively. So I simply did a backup of the Sharepoint content databases on the old SQL Server 2005 server using the built in tools, copied the backup files to the new server and then ran a restore.

Now in our environment we have several email enabled Document Libraries, a couple of which are mission critical. Hence the main reason for performing the upgrade over the weekend. 

The migration went well and all the content databases restored and upgraded using the instructions from Microsoft. I went to the main Document Library to check on the email enabled setting but the link was missing in the Document Library settings. So a quick check in the Sharepoint Administration site quickly showed me I had to enable the Incoming Email Service. So following the instruction (it's pretty much the same as on Sharepoint 2007) I installed the SMTP service on the Sharepoint 2010 server and user the IIS 6 Management tool to setup the domain aliases and trusted mail servers the same way as I had it setup in the old environment.

I then went into the Document Library settings and sure enough the link for the Email Enabling the Document Library was there and going in I saw all the settings were as they were on the old server, so I thought, job done.

I sent a test message to the document Library's email address and waited for it to appear in the list, and waited, and waited. Nothing appeared, uh! oh!. So I went through all the settings just to make sure. I then opened up the SMTP Drop Folder and watched while I sent another email. The email appeared in the Drop Folder and disapeared. This means that the SMTP service was working and that Sharepoint was picking up the email but nothing was appearing in the Document Library.

I tried several ways to try and track what was happening but nothing was appearing in any logs which seemed odd. Entries were in the SMTP log but nothing in the Sharepoint Timer service log which is the service that picks up the emails and transfers them to the appropriate Document Library.

After a few days of failed solutions and scouring the internet for hours I took one last ditch attempt to figure out what was going on.

In a separate Site Collection, I created a new Document Library and setup the incoming email address. I then sent it an email. The email appeared!!

I then had a thought, what if there was a missing attribute that was causing the problem and because the migrated Document Libraries were already enabled what if I disabled the function and then re-enabled it.

So that's what I tried. I went into the Document Library settings and clicked Incoming E-mail Settings. I set "Allow this document library to receive e-mail" to No and clicked Save.

I then clicked Incoming E-mail Settings again and set "Allow this document library to receive e-mail" to Yes and clicked Save again.

I then sent the Document Library an email and held my breath, a few moments later the email appeared!!! I then immediately went through all my document libraries and did the same thing.

So for those of you suffering the same problem of incoming emails not appearing in migrated Sharepoint Document Libraries, the answer appears to be to turn it off and turn on again :-)

Some useful links:

An SMTP Testing Service

Setting up Incoming E-mail Service on Sharepoint 2010

Comments

[John]

All you actually have to is run the following stadm command for each site collection:

stsadm -o refreshdms -url http://xxxx/xxx

That will fix all the incoming email.

[sung.yang@lge.com]

Hi Paul,

You saved me tons of time.
We have a sharepoint site for RMA and this stopped for a week in a production environment. I tried everything i know and your method resolved this problem like a charm!!!!!

Thanks million.
Sung

[Hikmer]

Pretty typical, the migration process has a lot to be desired. I wil be testing this today to see if a newer cumlative update fixes this or if having the incoming email already setup BEFORE the migration affects this issue.

[zee]

Thanks for sharing. Good info.
zee
walisystems.com

[Patrick Imboden]

Thnanks 4 sharing!